It called the development a “stark warning for Canadian society.”
According to its Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, there was a total of 6,219 such occurrences in 2024, a 7.4 per cent increase over 2023 and the equivalent of 17 incidents a day. From 2022 to 2024, it said, the number of antisemitic incidents jumped 124.6 per cent.
The organization attributes the increase in large part to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian organization governing the Gaza Strip, and the escalation of the Gaza war throughout 2024 and early 2025. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization under Canada’s Criminal Code since November 2002
“The atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, opened deep fissures in Canadian society,” B’nai B’rith director of research and advocacy Richard Robertson said in an April 7 news release. “The subsequent rise in antisemitism has exposed a disturbing undercurrent of Jew-hatred driven by a virulent, radicalized minority.
“We cannot permit this to become normalized,” he added. “Antisemitism is not only a threat to Jews — it represents a total repudiation of Canadian values. Those who foment hate against any marginalized group stand in direct opposition to our multicultural, diverse national identity.”
The group pointed to incidents like a March 2024 cartoon published by the Quebec daily La Presse depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Nosferatu, a vampire villain frequently associated with Jews in Nazi-era propaganda.
The string of serious incidents also included shots being fired in May at a Jewish girls’ school in Toronto. It was targeted twice more by gunfire later in the year. In addition, in August, a bomb threat menaced Jewish institutions throughout the country, including synagogues, community centres and B’nai B’rith Canada offices.
In November, it noted, anti-Israel protesters rallied outside a synagogue in Montreal and chanted antisemitic slogans, in defiance of a court order prohibiting the groups involved from assembling near the building. B’nai B’rith Canada also cited a firebombing in December of Congregation Beth Tikvah, in the Montreal suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux — the second such attack at the location in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023.
According to the audit, 1,782 of the incidents occurred in Ontario (a 25.8 per cent decrease from 2023), followed by Quebec with 1,651 incidents — a 215.7 per cent increase. Alberta saw the third-highest number of incidents — 916, representing a 160.2 per cent increase.
“Across the board, antisemitic actors tended to make use of novel technologies, including artificial intelligence,” said the B’nai B’rith news release. “Online incidents have increased 161 per cent since 2022, although there has been a concurrent proliferation in physical, in-person incidents targeting Jewish people or institutions.”
According to Statistics Canada’s most recent report on police-reported hate crimes in Canada, released in March 2024, incidents increased by seven per cent in 2022 over 2021, reaching 3,576 incidents, with a cumulative rise of 83 per cent from 2019 to 2022. Half of racialized Canadians reported experiencing discrimination in the past five years, with 66 per cent attributing it to race or skin colour. Black Canadians faced the sharpest rise in racially motivated hate crimes (up 28 per cent), followed by white (54 per cent) and South Asian (18 per cent) populations.
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